When science is your interest, the world becomes your laboratory. No one knows this better than Janice VanCleave. Janice’s research has taken her to the ends of the Earth and many places in between. She has stood at the South Pole and collected samples from the Arctic Ocean. She has walked on glaciers and through volcanic lava tubes, studied whales and bears, and performed experiments at zero gravity on NASA’s microgravity plane, commonly called the “Vomit Comet.” Janice’s list of things she would like to do include studying polar bears in the Arctic and penguins along the coastline of Antarctica. For a warmer trip, she has coral reefs in Australia and rainforests in Indonesia on her travel list.
Janice’s interest in science began when she was growing up in Houston, Texas. Houston was a much smaller city then, and her home was surrounded by wooded areas where she spent hours climbing trees and catching toads, lizards, turtles, and other animals. She is still as curious as ever about animals and takes every opportunity she can to study them up close. Her current collection includes one dog, one cat, three Madagascar hissing cockroaches, and two African aquatic frogs, but the fields surrounding her home/laboratory are filled with specimens that she collects and observes. She has had tarantulas, iguanas, and lizards and has even considered keeping some exotic kind of snake. “I am still thinking about the snake,” says Janice.
Janice is the author of over 45 science books for kids, published by John Wiley and Sons in New York. She has written books for kids of all ages. Her books have been translated into 13 languages, and sales of her books recently topped two million copies.
Today, Janice travels widely to present science workshops that fascinate kids and adults alike. Her “Make-and-Take” teacher workshops include activities taken from the VanCleave books. Each hands-on, activity-based session provides a potpourri of science experiments aimed at “firing life” into the science curriculum for teachers of grades K-6. A “Science Is Cool” program for kids in grades K-6 is designed to entertain, excite, and encourage children so that they will want to learn more about science. The objective of the program is to send every child away with the idea that science is FUN!
In Janice’s newest book, Science Around the Year, she presents interesting science projects that relate to the four seasons—autumn, winter, spring, and summer. The best thing about these, as with all of Janice’s investigations, is that they can be performed right at the kitchen table using everyday objects found in the home. This is a great way for parents to spend quality time with their children while exploring the world of science. Janice VanCleave has this advice for her six grandchildren, and all children: “Saturate your mind with as much knowledge as possible. You may not see the value of it now, but store it away for future use.”
